When doing the meme that Jayne had tagged me for it asked me for the last five jobs I have had and that got me thinking, “I wonder what the people who read this blog do?”. I am sure that some of you have some amazingly cool or weird jobs.
When I tell people what I do I get some really blank looks. I work in tech support for a digital technology solutions provider. See? No one even some of those in my industry know what I do and on some days I am not sure what I do either.
The company I work for provides products that digital media agencies and publishers use to buy and sell online media, deliver online ads and track users on their site. I provide support for those products as well as general support in getting online ads to work properly. In a single day I can de-bug actionscript, edit javascript, answer “how do I do that?” questions, work out what is causing a discrepancies between our reporting and the reports from another ad server system and train people in how to use our products. I feel I am still on a steep learning curve trying to learn everything I need to know to do my job properly.
So, what do you do to earn a living and what does your job involve? Feel free to tell me how much you love or hate your job as well.
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Ten years ago, I was in my third year of my science degree and had just recently come out. My mother was screaming at me down the phone that she didn’t want me turning into a butch dyke and sending me flannel shirts and a toolbox for Christmas. It was an interesting time.
What are 5 things on your to-do list today?
Grocery shopping
Laundry (am part way through this one)
Vaccuuming
Washing the dishes
Watch the latest episode of Doctor Who
If you hadn’t guessed Sunday is my day for doing stuff around the house.
What snacks do you enjoy?
Chocolate and then some more chocolate. Popcorn, especially if there is a movie to be watched. Potato chips. Basically, if it is unhealthly, I like it.
Things that you would do if you were a billionaire?
Firstly I would pay off my mortgage and then quit my job. After doing that and some world travel, I would look at improving things here at home by funding some decent public transport and research into clean energy. I would demolish the desalination plant and get storm water harvesting up and running. It rains enough in Sydney that we really don’t need to use up energy converting seawater into drinking water.
Three of your bad habits?
Where do I start?
Emotional/comfort eating - I am not that bad, but I shouldn’t do it at all.
Procrastinating - I would get so much more done if I did them instead of just thought about doing them.
Worrying - I worry way too much about little things and when I worry too much I have anxiety attacks which are not fun.
Five places you have lived?
Newcastle
Sydney - Forest Lodge, Newtown, Alexandria and Surry Hills plus quite a few other suburbs.
Five jobs you’ve had?
Drama Teacher
Cinema Worker
Content Editor
Telecommunications Interception Officer
Veterinary Nurse
Tech Support
How did you name your blog?
It comes from one of my favourite quotes - “Talking about love is like dancing about architecture.”
I am not going to tag anyone, but if you want to do it please do as I would love to see your answers.
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There has been quite a bit of buzz about the upcoming Maxis game Spore and with the release of the Creature Creator this buzz is only going to get louder. Spore is a god game that allows you to guide your creature from a single cell organism right through to a conqueror of planets. To help fuel the hype about the game, Maxis have released a free trial version of their Creature Creator that lets you design your very own creature and put it through its paces.
To run the Creature creator and also the parent game Spore, you are going to need a fairly grunty computer, processor speed wise. The specs needed are;
Processor - 2.0 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
Memory - XP: 512 MB RAM / Vista: 768 MB RAM
Hard Drive - At least 300 MB of hard drive space for installation, plus additional space for created creatures. (190 MB for the Trial Edition)
Video Card - A 128 MB Video Card, with support for Pixel Shader 2.0*
Fortunately, I have recently purchased a new laptop with 2.4GHz processor, so I was able to download the trial version of the Creature Creator and give it a go. The Creator Creator is a 206MB download, so be prepared for a wait whilst it downloads unless you are fortunate enough to have high speed broadband.
My first impression running the Creature Creator was “Wow“. Really nice crisp graphics but more importantly background music that is not irritating. The Creature Creator is really simple to use, but to get the maximum value out of it I advise you watch the online tutorial first. Armed with the basic techniques you can create much cooler creatures than stumbling around not knowing what you are doing (trust me on this one).
The sky is the limit when designing your creature, but to make sure things don’t get too out of hand, each body part is assigned a DNA dollar value and you only have a 2,000 limit. This can put a damper on some truly extreme designs, but I found it very easy to create a creature and stay well under the limit. However, the trial version only has about 25% of the parts that will be offered in the game, so when given much more choice staying under the limit may become a problem.
When you are happy with your creature’s design, you can then add some colour with the Paint feature. Again, being only the trial version, there is a limited number of designs, but with the design your own section functional in the trial version, you are not going to run out of different colour schemes until well after Spore is released.
Once you are happy with how your creature looks, you can put it through its paces with the Test Drive feature. For me, this was the best part of the game, simply because I am easily amused by a dancing creature. As well as making your creature break out into various dance moves, you can test a variety of emotions, specific actions and of course walking. An extra feature of the Test Drive is the Babies function which lets you see what your creature’s offspring will look like. Just be prepared for your creature not being too impressed with its kids.
One of the most impressive features of the Creature Creator is its integration with You Tube, which is available in the trial version. You can make a movie of your creature and upload it to You Tube directly from the game. If you don’t have a You Tube account, you can create one whilst still in the game. The upload to You Tube does take some time, but it is a perfect excuse to grab a cup of coffee or take a bathroom break.
For those interested, here is a video of my creature being put through its paces. The only downside to it is that when I watch it, the audio is out of sync. However, when viewed on a different computer it played fine. I have no idea what is going on there.
You can also share your creature with the rest of the Spore community and take a peek at what others are creating in the Sporepedia. Some of the creatures that have been created are truly mind blowing and if you want to, you can grab them and place them into your game. You can also create your very own Spore Page, however, this feature does require you to create a free account and register your game, but it is well worth doing.
So, does the Creature Creator live up to the hype? Hell yes! I am more excited about Spore after playing around with the Creature Creator than I was before, and I will admit, I was pretty excited about it beforehand.
The Creature Creator is a fantastic game for for all ages, but would really appeal to both kids and adults who have an interest in computer animation and design. If you have a budding young Pixar animator in your family then this free download is a must.
The game Spore is due for release on 7th September in the US and 5th September in Europe. At this stage, it looks like that Australia is being counted as part of Europe and we will be getting it on the 5th September as well.
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Overnight Google has added a new feature to their site, rainbow stripes down the side of the page when you search for the keywords “gay”, “lesbian”, “bisexual” or “transgender”.
This is possibly Google’s way to show support for the new legislation in California that allows same-sex couples to get married. However, I can’t find anything on their official blog that mentions the rainbow strips or the reason for them.
The religious right and other bigots are already out in force protesting this new addition to the Google site.
Duncan Riley has written a blog post called The Religious Right is Going to Boycott Google in 3..2..1 on his blog The Inquistir. This post was also displayed on Friend Feed. In both places commenters have left blatant anti-gay comments. When Duncan blocked them on Friend Feed, they headed over to his blog to abuse not only Google but Duncan as well.
There are also the commenters who are trying not appear homophobic by saying that Google showing the rainbow stripes really makes gay people feel marginalised, but then go on to say that perhaps gay people like it that way. You know, I think society as a whole is doing a pretty damn good job of doing marginalising gay people without Google’s ‘help’. Google putting up some rainbow stripes does not increase this feeling of marginalisation for the gay community. You have to wonder if the same people also get equally upset when Google has a special logo for Black History Month and Martin Luther King’s Anniversary? Or is only homophobia cool these days since society generally frowns on expressions of racism?
Thank you Google for braving the backlash of the religious right and other intolerant members of society by proudly showing your support of gay people everywhere. I guess the religious right will now have to go and make friends with Yahoo.
If you do want to brave the discussion going on on Friend Feed, Duncan’s feed can be found here. Also while you are there, you can look me up as well.
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I love my Firefox browser. If it didn’t have to have Internet Explorer on my computer for browser compatibility testing, I would delete the bastard from all of my computers.
Firefox is now releasing its newest version Firefox 3 and to celebrate its release Firefox is attempting to download its way into the Guinness World Record Book by having the most downloads of a piece of software in a 24 hour period.
The 24 hour period started at 3am this morning in Austalia (10am Pacific time for US readers) and runs through to 3am tomorrow. If you love Firefox or have ever thought about giving it ago, then click on the funky logo below and download it now!
If you want to see how many downloads there have been already and see which countries are the biggest downloaders, head over to Download Day 2008.
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When doing the meme that Jayne had tagged me for it asked me for the last five jobs I have had and that got me thinking, “I wonder what the people who read this blog do?”. I am sure that some of you have some amazingly cool or weird jobs.
